Visitor would experience different shadows, visions at different levels of participation. E.g., if you're in a desolate place, receiving messages from a paradise, you might perceive them as voices from the past, with no hope of getting back to that state, or as voices from the future, with hope because you're headed there.

This creates an interesting psychological space.

Space Treatment:
One idea: each installation will represent the same location, but at a different time in the future, and a different phase in the cycle.

Another idea: each installation will not neccessarily represent the same location, rather, we will work with the location we have and transform that space into what it would look like in the phase it finds itself in. I.e. modify or 'age' the environment, maybe in a very subtle manner on the fringes, so when you approach the area you will start noticing (from the corner of your eye) some inconsistencies in the environment that, as you draw closer to the heart of the installation, become consistent and constitute a dramatic time shift.

Sketch of the phases:
1) The Apocalypse - the disaster itself, fire, smoke, thunder, tumult.
Imagery from: natural and manmade disasters

2) Dark Ages - total chaos, competition, survival
Imagery from: the middle ages

3) Birth of Hope - reorganization, emergence of leaders, growth of altruism, change in attitudes
Imagery from: the renaissance, or the beginning of the industrial age

4) Emergent Corruption - destabilization, tension between saints and sinners.
Imagery from: contemporary media

The imagery can also include fictuous events of the future or even other worlds to scale up from our relatively narrow and short term human history.

What the audience does or affects in one phase may alter the state of the next phase (located elsewhere), encouraging the audience there to react, that in turn will lead to alterations in further phases down the line ... that eventually close a circle of cause/effect waves.

The different roles of the audience members call for different tools for them to play with. In fact, their choice of tools may define their role.

Possible props/tools in the space:
-- Sheets with projections on them, swirling portals to other time periods.
-- Phones for communication with other time periods, hotwired, always ringing
-- Answering machines for leaving a message in another time
-- Other communications devices
-- lighting
-- games, puzzles
-- surveillance cameras and monitors
-- News on the TV / Papers (Links to a larger world outside)

The phases each call for different 'morphs' of these props. I.e. shiny versus worn and broken, noisy versus silent, mechanical versus computational.

Idea for use of pagers:
-- if you're feeling at a loss
-- as a way to time travel
-- as a beam-up

There should be balances that need to be maintained, quests, struggles.
Some examples are:
-- nature vs. humanmade
-- war vs. peace
-- altruism vs. competition

To give the visitors feedback: use an algorithm to calculate if they live or die (succeed or fail) depending on their cooperation or lack thereof.

Possible idea of a 'seeing eye of the universe' to observe the state of the world.

Possible use of surveillance systems.

Problems to solve:

• What's the hook?
  

  The official goal: Save the world. Help stop the recursive cataclysm. where the world is going. Experiment with strong universal forces.

• How do we make people curious?
  

  The transformation of the setting draws people in.
  

  The live images, voices, text from other participants in remote places will keep them inside and 'connect' them to the event.
  

  Element referring to popular and fan culture will be appealing to a range of passersby

• - How will people participate?
  

  Play games, solve puzzles, chat, talk, fool around
  

  Receive requests from other people, asking them to do things that only can be done in a specific phase. In turn, they may have to find people in yet another phase and ask them to help.

  (can be as simple as "please turn off the nuclear reactor to prevent a disaster", this may save the future but cut the power in the current phase)

• - What are some good public spaces?
  

  Train stations
  

  Airports
  

  Schools

• - Who are some characters who could serve as guides or inhabitants of the different phases? What would their roles be?
  

  A lost timetraveller. A historian. An alien. Competing spirits/divine beings, trying to influence the actions of the mortals. Ghosts from the future that reflect in their behaviour how things will evolve.
  

Books:
Lord of the Flies
Papillion
Logan's Run

Movies:
Planet of the Apes
Mad Max, Road Warrior
Blade Runner
Delicatessen
City of the Lost Children - Timeless scenery
Brazil
1984
Escape form New York
12 Monkeys
Judge Dredd
Demolition Man
various Manga Animes - Future vision, scenery

Wars and conflicts in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, the Persian Gulf